My Perfect Sister
I love my older sister. I really do. She has some issues, sure, but she’s all I really have since dad passed away a few months ago. My sister was my touchstone in life. She was the person I ran to for all my ills and follies. We would often whisper hurried little secrets to each other, in hushed tones, as if our lives depended on the secrecy. We were quite close, and even played a game called ‘escape’ that we made up. It was just us mostly running around the room, and pretending to pick locks and feel around for trick doors. It was all pretty harmless I thought, until one day dad brought Maddie (my sister) aside and whispered something to her, gesturing angrily in my direction. We stopped playing that game forever that day. Maddie never told me why, she would just smile at me and pet my hair as she told me a story and we’d go to sleep. When I was younger, Maddie was perfect. Well, according to our dad anyways, she was the daughter that my parents had dreamed of. This wasn’t always the case, as Maddie used to cry a lot when we were both very young. My earliest memories in life are of my sister crying. She cried literally all the time! Huge wracking sobs that made me a little scared of her, but soon they changed to a softer sort of cry that went on for months and months. She still cried at night sometimes, but once she stopped crying in the day, she was the perfect child. The one mom got to love. Oh I’m sorry, I forgot to mention that. My mother had passed away giving birth to me; it’s why I didn’t really blame dad for all the times I would hear him talk about Maddie being the perfect daughter. Every time he looked at me, I knew he was looking into the eyes of the daughter that ended mom’s life. The "Other" daughter. Dad did love me in his own way, but I didn’t mind anyways because Maddie always made me feel special. As I was saying, once the crying stopped, she was the perfect child. She was so pretty with her blond hair and blue eyes that were so unlike my own, that she drew admirers wherever we went. Sometimes we would go into town and people would just stare at her. There were even a few times when men had approached Maddie while she was seemingly on her own in an aisle of the grocery store. Our dad was a protective figure though so he’d get us away from the men, and we would usually move towns, as dad didn’t want to take any chances on our wellbeing. There was this one man, this one stalker, we saw in more than one of the cities we lived in. He was this big burly man that wore clothes two sizes too big. His brown hair was unkempt and he always had stubble, but what I noticed most about him was the bags under his sad, blue eyes. Whenever we saw that man we ended up moving at least three times, trying to shake this stalker who was so intent on possessing my sister. Eventually dad stopped bringing us into town for a few years. I blamed Maddie a bit; after all, it was because of her childish beauty that we were often relegated to a cabin in the woods. We lived a number of years after that in one spot, until one day the stalker showed up again. It was an anticlimactic visit however, as my dad shot him. We left immediately and cabin hopped a number of times until we got to settle down again. My sister was never satisfied with our dad’s explanation about the man being ok and surviving the shot. She often argued if he had survived, why didn’t dad just call the cops and let them take it over from there? Our dad would then rant about how the justice system was crap and how the stalker would be free in a few years to track us down again. He would then force us to drop the conversation, but Maddie was never convinced. Then a few months ago I came home to my father in a pool of blood in the cabin, his head bashed in from an iron skillet. Distraught, I looked for Maddie, and found her sitting on the floor of dad’s bedroom crying, surrounding her was the tattered insides of an old photo album dad kept in his room in a locked cupboard. I had always assumed they were precious pictures of our mother he was keeping to himself, but glancing at a few of them, I noticed the blue eyed stalker in at least two of the news clippings. In one picture he looked just as I remembered him, and there was a caption about his murder investigation, and in another, obviously older picture, he didn’t look sad or disheveled, he looked extremely happy, standing there with his arms around his darling blond wife and my sister. I touched my sister’s shoulder and startled her. She looked up at me with tear filled eyes, and started to rave on and on about going away and finding this woman, and how I could probably go and find my own mother. I hugged her and helped her up and out of the room. She was crying so hard she couldn’t see, so I had to be the strong one and lead her through the rooms. Her one flaw in life was crying, other than that she was virtually perfect… my perfect, beautiful sister, whom I love with all my heart. Once I got her to the cellar and locked the door, I was able to breathe easy knowing she was safe. She still cries sometimes, but like I said earlier, she has some issues. I’m only writing this to you to tell you all that once you find perfection, you shouldn’t be afraid of keeping it. I know I will fight to keep my sister by my side forever… I love her. Category:BCP Category:Pastas